AfD and anti-Islam Pegida group hold side-by-side rallies for first time

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and the anti-Islam Pegida movement both held demos in Dresden at the same place on Monday, raising questions about the groups coming closer together.

In a first, the Dresden branch of the AfD party and Pegida both held rallies on Monday in the same location one after the other in the Saxon capital where the anti-Islam movement was founded and regularly holds Monday demos.

But while the Pegida side called the demos a "double event", the local AfD leadership insisted that the rallies were separate, according to Tag24. A Saxony regional leader of the AfD, Egbert Ermer, referred to "our friends from Pegida", but he also spoke of a separation between the two groups, according to the Dresdener Neueste Nachrichten (DNN).